The Phantom Eight

Phantom: A figment of imagination. That was what they called us. No one ever knew what happened. There were theories. But they were wrong.

Prologue

All her life, December was a wall flower. She was easy to forget, easy to pass by and not look at twice. No one ever took notice until she disappeared. She just vanished. One moment she was walking home from school and the next... she was gone. It was the same for them all. The Phantom Eight, they became known as, all over the world. Eight children, ranging in ages six to twelve, vanished simultaneously. All eight, all at the same time, all from different places all over the world, not seen again for seven years. Seven extremely long years. All records of them were wiped, only their family and friends were proof of their existence. But in time, many thought they had made them up, invented them. A daughter, a son, a friend or a brother.

No one ever found out their story, what happened to them. How they got their scars, inside and out. How they returned with one more that ever went missing. How they survived the torture inflicted on them

No one ever knew what happened.

No one ever knew the truth.

No one ever knew, until now.

Aged 10 (part 1)

Waking up felt strange, almost unnatural. Like my body had been out of commission for so long that it didn’t want to work, to do anything. After a few long minutes of trying, I managed to open my eyes and was instantly blinded by a glaring light directly above me. Groaning, I sat up and lent against a nearby wall, shielding my eyes. As I sat there, eyes adjusting, I noticed that I wasn’t alone; I was in a small-ish room with seven other children, all around my age and the youngest couldn’t have been any older than six. None of them were awake and I was too exhausted to move in any way to assist them, so there I sat. And there I stayed for the next few hours until a moan of pain drew my attention to a girl, no older than me, at the other end of the room. By then, my eyes were used to the glaring light, so I could easily see what was causing her pain; a long cut running from her hairline to the corner of her right eye that was red with dried blood. As the girl began to move, her cut began to bleed again, turning her damaged skin red with blood, so I ran over and told her to stay as still as she could so not to aggravate her wound further.    
   “My name’s December” I told her, stroking her long blond hair away from the cut “December Ambrosia Collins. What’s your name?” she blinked up at me, her eyes barely focusing and showing that she was trying to force her mind to work through the fog of pain that so clearly clouded her features.
   “Alianna. I’m Alianna” she stuttered out, wincing as the smallest of movements tugged at her open wound, drawing my attention back to it.
    “What happened Allie, who did this to you?” I asked as I began gently cleaning and patching up her cut with a first aid kit I found in the corner of the room, next to a boy of about 12 with white blond hair who was still unconscious.
   “I don’t really know, I just remember walking home from school and getting hit on the head, after that, only waking up here. Where are we?” the girls, Alianna, replied in a shaky tone. Before I could reply, or even say anything at all in response, another groan was heard, this time from a boy lying in the centre of the room and then again from with a younger girl with Auburn hair.
    “I have no idea” I told her whilst helping her to stand, or at least move her so she could lean against the wall “but it looks like everyone’s waking up, maybe they’ll know. Or at least know more than us.”

I’m not entirely sure how long it took before everyone had woken up, but it felt like hours had passed at the time, although it was probably only a few minutes. Eventually we were all awake and talking about what had happened to us. No one, it appeared, knew what had happened, they all said the same, that someone had hit them over the head and then they woke up here, in pain.
   “That’s it? That’s all anyone can remember?” I said as we sat on the filthy ground tending to our varying wounds.
   “Yeah, that’s it”
   “Nothing else”
    “Just darkness and pain” were the only responses that came back, I sighed giving up on working out why we were her as my head began to ache again, the confusion, pain and hunger that was beginning to set in mixed together, making it difficult to focus on anything. That was when the door opened and He walked in. The man that would be, in the years to come, our worst nightmare.

Author's Note

Please tell me if you see any spelling/grammar problems, tell me what you think and how I can improve

Reviews

[Robert Parlange]

Good hook for something longer. Hope to see more of this story.

Keep writing.

[Creativemama]

Very interesting. Would like to see you weave this into a really good book. The only grammar problem I saw is in the paragraph. The sentence starts with 'All the records of the.." I get the meaning but not a clear sentence. Otherwise this is a very good start to an interesting book.

[Eliza Williams]

Thank you, I'm planning on adding to this, making it longer and adding chapters. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll change that immediately.